The origin of the word "bugger" is actually not only tied in with some interesting history, but it highlights early mass political movements and just why the church has been so opposed to "unnatural acts" in the past few hundred years.
The OED is beautifully vague about the meaning of the word, but it does give the correct etymology: "bugger" < MF "bougrer" < MF/LL "Bougre," a Bulgar.
Here's the story: In the 11th century or so, a heresy (the Albigensians, aka the Cathars, aka the Bulgars because of their place of origin) cropped up and started to spread across Europe like wildfire. The theological content of the heresy was that the material world was evil, a creation of the devil (and yes, this idea was recycled from the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge) and that Christ was never a material man, so his physical death on the cross was meaningless and the veneration of the symbol is idolatry.
OK, this is what theologians talked about, but the man in the street - and this was a movement of the poor, by the way - understood none of this. The politics of this was a response to the horrible economic situation, the rising gap between rich and poor (and when "rich" means "feudal lords" and "poor" means "serfs," this can get pretty extreme) combined with the increased ease of travel and communication between cities - after the peace treaties of the early 11c stopped most of the internal wars in Europe for a while, and everyone got together to fight Crusades against the Muslims, it was suddenly possible to move around in Europe, and a bunch of serfs were wondering just why they were chained down to their estates.
So the meaning of the heresy was this: First of all, the physical world is evil - not a surprising thing to think if you're an 11th-century serf, but it was in direct contradiction to what the Church was telling everyone, that this is exactly the way things are supposed to be, and that the current political setup is an Earthly mirror of a divine plan of rulership. Second, Christ was not physical - thus his death on the cross was not real - thus his investiture of Peter was meaningless as well, and so priests should have no authority over the souls of men.
Basically, this turned into a mass popular movement in which serfs and peasants of various sorts formed into giant groups and travelled across the countryside, acknowledging no authority of lords or priests, living essentially as mendicants (since they had no real employment) and generally screwing with the medieval economy. The Church obviously really didn't like this, and they got wiped out in a particularly bloody manner. This was really the first major heresy war. (I should say that the Cathars turned very, very nuts towards the end, and got amazingly bloodthirsty themselves - nobody was very sorry to see them go by the end of this)
So anal sex mixes in to this because of another belief of the Cathars: Since the physical world is evil, to bring more things into the physical world is wrong. Phrased another way, the Cathars believed in birth control, something which the Church was fervently opposed to at the time because they needed people to do things like fight on the front lines against Vikings and Muslims and so on. Unlike some other heretical sects, who practiced abstinence, the Cathar doctrine suggested that nothing you do physically could be sinful - they preached free love and birth control, which in those days (pre-pill, pre-condoms of any useful sort) meant you just had to find another orifice.
Which is why the Cathars - or Bulgars - got associated with anal sex, and so the word "bougrer" entered the vernacular. So the next time you're involved in anal sex, whether giving or receiving, just think back for a moment and remember that what you're doing is one of the most radical acts of political protest against the power of the medieval church.
(Incidentally: I think that this may be the origin of the Church's opposition to "unnatural acts." Can anyone back or refute this statement?)
October 13 2002, 17:47:22 UTC 13 years ago
1) according to most accounts, the Cathars did in fact preach abstinence. They just recognized that it wasn't likely, and required it only for perfecti - not quite priests, but slightly more holy than Joe or Jane Cathar. So you could have sex, have kids, as long as you quit it if you felt like making the move up to perfectus. Most Cathar "believers" had families and children.
2) the Albigensian heresy is also part of the decline of the power of the southern French nobility - at the time, the Languedoc (or Langue d'Oc, from their word for "yes") region was culturally significantly different from northern France (the "Langue d'oil"). In the days before nationalism, religious schisms filled that niche. So, while ideas like "Armenia for the Armenians" weren't commonly expressed, you could say things like "get these filthy Greek Orthodox heretics out of Armenia!"
The southern French cathari were not exactly a working-class movement. The count of Foix's wife was a cathar; Raymond VI got excommunicated twice for working with them. Some lords got involved because the Albigensian Crusade was clearly out of hand (Pedro II of Aragon is a good example of this), but others were probably Cathars, like the lord who commanded Terme. Cathars were no more all poor and un-materialist than Catholics are all meek and peaceful.
Like most religious differences, this is only one aspect of a political and social conflict. Note that another lot of famous heretics, the Knights Templar, were controlled by knights from this part of the world.
3) the Cathars and the mendicant movements of the high middle ages aren't quite the same. While they may have been inspired by some of the same thinking, the Cathars appear to have been largely urbanites, not the destitute type. A roll call of the cities attacked by the Crusaders during the Albigensian crusades - cities sufficiently Cathar or Cathar-sympathetic to resist the Pope and the King of France - should serve to highlight this. Many Cathars were quite wealthy. Most plundering and craziness by mendicant groups like the Fraticelli took place in the late 13th or 14th century. Among the insults the church slung at these guys was certainly that they were Cathars or Cathar-like, but they weren't suppressed with anything like the effort or the brutality that went into rooting out the Cathari. This is probably because they were so poor; they had nothing for Simon de Montfort to bootjack.
4) Whether the Cathars were really all about the butt-sex is another tough one; it's entirely possible that their association with it comes from the church trying to discredit them by suggesting that they were homosexuals - which strikes me as the pot calling the kettle black a little bit. As to where the church's opposition to homosexuality comes from, it's a good question. The church, of course, used to be opposed to sex in general, and has always held that sex is about procreation, which would naturally tend to rule out many forms of intercourse. I've heard it said that the church's prohibitions against homosexuality are relatively recent, but equally I've never heard of it being tolerated in anything other than isolated areas for short periods.
October 13 2002, 21:59:00 UTC 13 years ago